Three keys to Become a Top Expert

04Jan

I listened to a radio show this morning where the presenter was encouraging everyone to strive to become a top expert in an areas of there choice. One caller asked, “What does it take to become a top expert?” The presenter responded, “Hardwork.” The caller sounded a little unsatisfied with the response so I thought sharing with you here three keys to become a top expert would be of valuable reflection especially as 2014 is just rolling its sleeves up to give you a run for your money.

What does it take to become a top expert? This is a good question to ask every expert worth the status out there. I believe that you will get as many answers as there are experts. However, I am going to share with you three key things that make most people’s journey to expertise easier, quicker and much fun. To become an expert in my opinion, it takes three key things;

1. Passion

You will agree with me that the more you like doing something, the more time you dedicate to it, the more it arrests your attention and the more you find it irresistible to your nature. Most experts are passionate about what they do and it is that passion that has lubricated their way to the to.

As love is the only excuse for marriage, true love and passion for a particular line of work will be the single most factor which will carry a person over the difficulties and challenges found in any work. In a statement, passion makes a task manageable.

Lack of passion creates a an unconcerned and an uninterested worker. And without interest it is hard to pay keen attention. Without attention, learning is difficult and slow if possible. This makes both concentration and memory hard to profit from.

Interest and passion have a way of alerting the brain, energizing the body and persuading all other body faculties to resonate with sympathy to the work at hand. passion will build purpose within your daily functions. It will make worker focus more on mastering the task of their interest than on the money they are being paid to do it.

Nothing will drive your mastery of a subject or a task like an insatiable passion and hunger for more knowledge and practice.

Passion alone inspires creativity. As a rule, relaxed and interested brain operates at peak levels. Passion will call out the most utility from your mental resources. Every strain and pain will dissolve in the presence of a passionate will. William Shakespeare once shared guiding wisdom about working with passion when he proclaimed;

The labor we delight in physics pain.

2. Practice

The second most valuable condition that enhances mastery is practice. Practice is the act of rehearsing a behavior over and over, or engaging in an activity again and again, for the purpose of improving or mastering it.

The constant attempt to do better with the knowledge, skills and other resources at your disposal; the firm belief in applying and verifying techniques from research; the curious observation of things to drew in helpful lessons and the daily reflection on how to approach tasks better for superior results; these are the essence of practice.

I will put the requirement of learning and knowledge acquisition here. Otherwise, you cannot apply or practice what you haven’t learnt. Learn all you can so that your practice can be more fruitful. When you learn much, practice is fun and when you constantly harp on the same string, the labor is very monotonous and discouraging.

A person who has gathered up a lot of knowledge that they don’t apply is as good as a person without such knowledge at all. What clearly marks an expert out of the crowd is application of the knowledge they possess. Application helps to reveal which ideas and theories are not applicable to a particular context.

Practice reveals what works well and what does not work about what one knows. It creates clarity on what information and skill gaps an individual needs in order to perform at a certain level.

Without putting your ideas to test, to establish which one is reliable and which one is hypothetical, you can not grow professionally.
Practice will remove your ideas and skills from the memory store and make them more available to you. When you practice a lot doing something like playing a game, riding, driving, speaking, etc, such skills will gradually become second nature to the doer to the degree that he or she can perform them with minimal mental task.

There are many instances where after an inspirational lesson or a simple video, the learner imagines that they can reproduce what they have heard and seen and thereafter makes no effort to practice.

Weeks or months later, an emergency occurs where a similar skill is required. Only then does the learner discover that they actually cannot do what they thought was an easy thing.

Things look easy when they are being performed by a master because of the grace, ease, sagacity and style that years of constant practice have built in the master’s psycho motor domain.

Practice with increase your confidence and sense of anticipation while dealing with your occupational challenges. No one can become an expert by knowing alone, true expertise requires doing. The world will not pay you for what you know but what you can do with what you know – to solve real life problems.

3. Performance

This is the execution of real work that someone is contracted to do. To build expertise, one has to endeavour to put consistence into their performance. Getting the same results [or better] each time you attempt a task is the essence of consistence. If your good performances come once in a while, then you are not yet at the cadre of an expert.

Consistent expert performance means that a poor performance is very unlikely; experts don’t deliver results by chance, they deliver results by design. They master their trade just like the back of their hand. Any time anywhere, they are confident of their mastery.

This in everyday talk is what they refer to as ‘a great track record’ or a great work record. A list of countless instances where you have do and redone excellent work. This build trust and belief in the prospective clients. People will want to know that much of your experience has been centered on executing right stuff not making excuses for countless errors.

To become saleable, there is one final idea that I have not numbered as fourth because I regard it as the total essence of saleability in the marketplace. That is building credibility or integrity. Possessing all the above qualities is a sure to strengthen your integrity.